SAN LEANDRO, CA - MAY 15: Brand new Chevrolet cars sit on the sales lot at F.H. Dailey Chevrolet on May 15, 2014 in San Leandro, California. General Motors announced the recall of 2.7 million GM cars and trucks for five different safety issues that include steering and braking problems. Vehicles affected by the recall include the 2004-2012 Chevrolet Malibu, 2008-2013 Corvette, 2005-2010 Pontiac G6, 2007-2010 Saturn Aura and the 2013-2014 Cadillac CTS. GM has issued 24 recalls in 2014 that have affected 11.2 million vehicles in the U.S. and 12.8 worldwide. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

(Justin Sullivan - Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Saying that safety practices at General Motors were “broken,” federal regulators on Friday imposed the biggest punishment they could on the automaker and condemned it over its failure to promptly report a defect that GM has linked to 13 deaths.

GM will pay a $35 million penalty — the maximum allowed, and the largest ever imposed on an automaker — and will be required to make wide-ranging changes to its safety practices that will be supervised by the government, another first for an automaker.

“What GM did was break the law,” Anthony Foxx, the secretary of transportation, said at a news conference.

The investigation found “deeply disturbing” evidence over how GM treated safety concerns, said David Friedman, who works under Foxx as head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Friedman cited an internal presentation from 2008 that was used to train employees to obscure some problems.

Workers writing reports were encouraged to avoid using certain words and phrases with negative overtones, including “apocalyptic,” “dangerous,” “death trap,” “potentially disfiguring,” “rolling sarcophagus” and “Corvair-like,” as well as more benign phrases like “safety” and “safety-related.”

The internal presentation also instructed employees not to be “cute or clever.” It gave examples of “comments that do not help identify or solve problems,” including, “This is a lawsuit waiting to happen,” and, “Kids and wife panicking over the situation.”

Under the consent order, GM must meet monthly with regulators for a year and provide a list of every safety-related issue under consideration by the company, as well as report on any new communications with dealers.

The company also agreed to improve information-sharing across its different units, make recall decisions more quickly and revise its analysis practices to improve the ability to identify safety issues.

Friedman said that the close oversight of GM by the safety agency — which itself is under investigation by lawmakers for failing to act on the problem — would last up to three years and would be thorough “to the point that the instant they see there’s a potential safety issue, they have to tell us about it.”

GM said it would work with regulators to improve its safety practices.

“We have learned a great deal from this recall,” Mary Barra, GM’s chief executive, said in a statement. “We will now focus on the goal of becoming an industry leader in safety. We will emerge from this situation a stronger company.”

GM has already made changes to its safety practices since the recall began.

It has appointed a new global head of vehicle safety, Jeff Boyer, and named a new vice president in charge of global product integrity, Ken Morris. It has hired a team of product investigators to examine consumer complaints and warranty claims for potential product safety issues in vehicles.

The government’s review of internal company documents showed that GM had known for years that faulty ignition switches were prone to turn off, preventing the air bags from working.

Despite numerous red flags, GM did not tell the government, and only in February of this year did it initiate a recall, which grew to include 2.6 million Chevrolet Cobalts, Saturn Ions and other small cars.

“Their process was broken, and they need to fix it,” Friedman said.

The investigation failed to establish whether Barra, a high-ranking engineering executive for years and the chief executive since Jan. 15, knew about the problems.

The size of the penalty quickly came under fire from lawmakers and safety advocates, who criticized it as far too small.

“A penalty of $35 million is a parking ticket in comparison the toll this defect has taken on the lives of America’s families,” Sen. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., said in a statement. A proposal before Congress, pushed by the safety agency, would raise the maximum penalty to $300 million.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., also criticized the size of the fine, calling it “a pittance,” but added that new safety practices at GM were necessary. “Changes to GM’s internal process of handling recall issues are vital in preventing future tragedies of this nature,” he said.

Along with the push to increase the maximum penalty to $300 million, GM faces the possibility of payments stemming from the Justice Department’s criminal prosecution, like the one that was brought against Toyota for concealing safety defects. In that case, settled this year, Toyota paid a $1.2 billion settlement.

GM is facing other investigations as well, including those from House and Senate subcommittees, a group of state attorneys general, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. And hundreds of private claims and lawsuits have been filed against the company.

Friedman said that automakers must “hear the clear message that they must react immediately to potential safety defects.”

Matthew L. Ward and Danielle Ivory, The New York Times

TIMELINE: The rocky road to a recall

Here are key events in GM’s recall of 2.6 million vehicles for a switch defect that can cause the car to stall and deactivate the air bags. GM links the defect to 13 deaths.

2001: A report notes problems with the ignition switches in the Saturn Ion while still in development but says a design change solved the problems.

February 2002: GM approves the ignition switch design, even though the supplier says the switch doesn’t meet GM’s specifications.

March 2005: The engineering manager of the Chevrolet Cobalt, the Ion’s cousin, closes an investigation into ignition switch problems, saying that proposed fixes would take too long and cost too much, and that “none of the solutions represents an acceptable business case.”

May 2005: A proposal to change the design of the key so it won’t tug the ignition switch downward is initially approved but later cancelled.

December 2005: GM tells dealers to inform owners of Cobalts to take excess items off their key chains.

April 2006: A GM engineer signs off on a redesign of the ignition switch. The new switch goes into cars from the 2007 model year and later.

November 2007: A NHTSA panel declines to open a formal investigation into why air bags didn’t deploy in some Cobalt and Ion crashes.

2010: After a NHTSA investigation, GM agrees to repair power steering motors in more than 1 million 2005-2010 Chevrolet Cobalts and 2007-10 Pontiac G5s.

December 2013: Mary Barra learns about the ignition switch defect, she later says.

February: In two separate actions, GM recalls 1.6 million small cars, including Cobalts and Ions, to repair defective ignition switches. The recall later grows to 2.6 million cars.

March 5: NHTSA demands GM documents showing when it found out about the ignition switch problem.

March 10: Barra orders an internal investigation.

March 17: GM announces three new recalls of 1.5 million vehicles.

March 18: Barra apologizes for the deaths that occurred. She appoints a new global safety chief.

March 31: GM recalls 1.5 million vehicles, including the 2010 Cobalt and the 2004-07 Ion, for a power-steering assist problem.

April 24: GM’s first-quarter profit falls 86 percent because of a $1.3 billion charge for the recalls. GM also discloses a probe by federal securities regulators.

Thursday: GM recalls another 2.7 million cars for various safety issues, bringing the total U.S. recalls to 11.2 million. GM will take a related $200 million charge.

Friday: The U.S. government hits GM with a record $35 million fine for failing for more than a decade to disclose problems with the ignition switches. GM agrees to report safety problems faster and consents to government oversight of its safety operations.